Society and culture
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Roland Barthes Mythologies and Selected Writings. The first, though dated, is the classic: a brilliant description of how the ideas, prejudices and contradictions of French thought and behaviour manifest themselves, in food, wine, cars, travel guides and other cultural offerings. Barthes' piece on the Eiffel Tower doesn't appear, but it's included in the Selected Writings, published in the US as A Barthes Reader (ed Susan Sontag).

Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex. One of the prime texts of Western feminism, written in 1949, covering women's inferior status in history, literature, mythology, psychoanalysis, philosophy and everyday life.

Denis Belloc Slow Death in Paris. A harrowing account of a heroin addict in Paris. Not recommended holiday reading, but if you want to know about the seamy underbelly of the city, this is the book.

* Walter Benjamin The Arcades Project. An all-encompassing portrait of Paris from 1830–70, in which the passages are used as a lens through which to view Parisian society. Never completed, Benjamin's magnum opus is a kaleidoscopic assemblage of essays, notes and quotations, gathered under such headings as "Baudelaire", "Prostitution", "Mirrors" and "Idleness".

James Campbell Paris Interzone. The feuds, passions and destructive lifestyles of Left Bank writers in 1946–60 are evoked here. The cast includes Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett, Boris Vian, Alexander Trocchi, Eugène Ionesco, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Nabokov and Allan Ginsberg.

Richard Cobb Paris and Elsewhere. Selected writings by the acclaimed historian of the Revolution reveal his unique encounter with the French.

Adam Gopnik Paris to the Moon. Intimately observed essays from the Paris correspondent of the New Yorker on society, politics, family life and shopping.

Gisèle Halimi Milk for the Orange Tree (o/p). Born in Tunisia, daughter of an Orthodox Jewish family; ran away to Paris to become a lawyer; defender of women's rights, Algerian FLN fighters and all unpopular causes. A gutsy autobiographical story.

Patrice Higonnet Paris, Capital of the World. An original cultural portrait of Paris, in which Higonnet, professor of French history at Harvard, examines the myths that have grown up around the city – the way it has been conceived, perceived and dreamed of by its inhabitants and visitors. He explores Paris as the capital of revolution, art and science, as well as crime and illicit pleasure. A scholarly read full of perceptive insights.

Tahar Ben Jelloun Racism Explained to my Daughter. An honest and straightforward account of the racial tensions in France as seen through the eyes of its Moroccan-born author. An international bestseller.

François Maspero Roissy Express; photographs Anaïk Frantz. A "travel book" along the RER line B from Roissy to St-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse (excluding the Paris stops). Brilliant insights into the life of the Paris suburbs, and fascinating digressions into French history and politics.

Andrea Kupfer Schneider Creating the Musée d'Orsay: The Politics of Culture in France. Interesting and sometimes amusing account of the struggles involved in transforming the Gare d'Orsay into one of Paris's most visited museums. An original insight, revealing French attitudes towards such grand cultural projects.

* Jean-Jacques Sempé Un peu de Paris. The cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé has long been known in France for his lovingly drawn cartoons and gently satirical take on the passions and follies of ordinary people. The subject of his latest collection, published by Gallimard, is contemporary Paris, peopled by nosy concierges, rollerblading youths, feisty old ladies and mini Napoleons.

Tyler Stovall Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light. A well-researched and vivid account of the flight of African-American artists in the 1920's from a segregated and racist America to a welcoming Paris.

Tad Szulc Chopin in Paris: The Life and Times of the Romantic Composer. While musicologists may be disappointed by the lack of discussion of the works that made Chopin famous, others will revel in this exploration of his relationship with his friends – Balzac, Hugo, Liszt among them – and his lover, George Sand, and their shared life in Paris.

Edmund White The Flâneur. An American expat novelist muses over Parisian themes and places as diverse as the Moreau museum, gay cruising and the history of immigration, as well as the art of being a good flâneur – a loiterer or stroller.

William Wiser The Twilight Years: Paris in the 1930s. Breathless account of the crazy decade before the war, all jazz nights, scandals and the social lives of expat poets and painters.

Theodore Zeldin The French. A wise and original book that attempts to describe a country through the thoughts and feelings of its people. Draws on the author's conversations with a fascinating range of French people, about money, sex, phobias, parents and everything else.